Stephanie Shanler is a Mount Holyoke College alumna and has been working in Kenya for many years. She is currently working at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, helping refugees from the violence in South Sudan. Her report on the conditions in the refugee camp is heartbreaking. Stephanie works for the United Nation’s Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), which is now headed by a former Mount Holyoke College faculty member, Anthony Lake.
There has been another act of violence in the city of Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang province. As many as 31 people were killed in a bomb explosion in an open air market in the city. Suspicion immediately fell on Uighur separatists who are demanding greater autonomy for their people from the central government in Beijing. The number of violent incidents in Xinjiang has risen dramatically in recent months and the central government has yet to figure out an effective response to the autonomy movement.
Russia and China vetoed the UN Security Council Resolution calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria. The decision signals the impotence of the UN in the face of one of the worst crises in the 21st century. The Russian statement explaining its veto exposes the many hypocrisies of previous diplomatic efforts, both in Syria and in other places, but fails to speak to the innocents in Syria who have had their lives destroyed.
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